The year 2012 saw the triumph of cold reality over pie-in-the-sky fantasies.

Barack Obama in 2008 won an election on an upbeat message of change amid hopes that the first black president would mark a redemptive moment in American history. Four years later, the fantasies are gone. In continuing dismal economic times, Obama ran for reelection neither on his first-term achievements  Obamacare, bailouts, financial stimuli, and Keynesian mega-deficits  nor on more utopian promises.

Instead, Obamas campaign systematically reduced his rival, Wall Street financier Mitt Romney, to a conniving, felonious financial pirate who did dastardly things, from letting the uninsured die to putting his pet dog Seamus in a cage on top of the family car.

Obama once had mused that he wished to be the mirror image of Ronald Reagan  successfully coaxing America to the left as the folksy Reagan had to the right. Instead, 2012 taught us that a calculating Obama is more a canny Richard Nixon, who likewise used any means necessary to be reelected on the premise that his rival would be even worse. But we know what eventually happened to the triumphant, pre-Watergate Nixon after November 1972; what will be the second-term wages of Obamas winning ugly?

The so-called fiscal cliff offers more examples of 2012 dreams giving way to reality.

Not one mention of the absolutely lousy campaign that Mitt Romney waged.

From supporting Abortion and the Gay Agenda, to refusing to stake out true limited-government solutions and communicate them as the only solution to our current fiscal crisis, to refusing to hold Obama accountable for they myriad of bad decisions and policy positions including his attempt at wealth redistribution at all levels of government including Obamacare.

Romney, with his progressive liberal past as Governor of MA, was the absolute worst possible GOP candidate.

Any real Republican, who was even moderately conservative and willing to hold Obama responsible for all of his bad decisions would have wiped the floor with Obama and walked away with a win.

Instead, we get the loser Romney who was supposed to be the most electable.

2
posted on 12/27/2012 2:41:16 AM PST
by SoConPubbie
(Mitt and Obama: They're the same poison, just a different potency.)

Could you possibly favor us with any of your replies posted prior to the election predicting what you lament afterwards?

I could(but won't), since I posted a lot of similar stuff before around march/April time frame of this year.

I was warning everyone that Romney was the worst possible candidate and the one most assured of losing.

Seems I was right, given the history.

And even if I hadn't, it's also common sense. You run an individual for a political party nomination(whose base is conservative) who supports most abortions (Rape, Incest, Life, and HEALTH of the mother) and supports large portions of the Gay Agenda, whose record is one of Progressive Liberalism as Governor, who lied about his ACTUAL conservative Primary opponents on a regular basis, and who lied about his own record, continually, and you are surprised he lost?

Why?

6
posted on 12/27/2012 3:00:21 AM PST
by SoConPubbie
(Mitt and Obama: They're the same poison, just a different potency.)

But, but . . . Romney was the only electable GOP candidate. Even Ann Coulter told us that.
2013 promises to be another year of misery as Obama and his state run propaganda machine tell us daily how it’s still not as bad as the Great Depression, Bataan Death March or Black Plague.

I’m so excited!

7
posted on 12/27/2012 3:00:41 AM PST
by atc23
(The Confederacy was the single greatest conservative resistance to federal authority ever.u)

Perhaps you should read the article. The article was about Obama policies, not election campaigns.

I did read the article. The author's point was made without considering the points I made, that Mitt Romney ran a lousy campaign and ran to the left away from the base of the GOP, instead of campaigning on a strictly limited government message, appealing to the all three factions of conservatives, like Reagan did, the Social, the Fiscal, and Military factions.

Instead, he gave the finger to social conservatives and told the Fiscal conservatives to go pound sand. He did, for the most part, speak to the Military conservative faction, but that alone was never going to win him the election.

Couple that with his total refusal to going after the failed policies and positions of the Marxist, Obama, and you have a sure-fired recipe for losing an election.

And instead of the pundits on our side, and those who supported Romney, being honest about it, we instead get lamentations about the cheating that went on and how the electorate has changed to a point that we, as conservatives, will never win a political race again.

Cowards!

You Don't run a Democrat-Lite politician as a Republican and then expect to win a national election.

8
posted on 12/27/2012 3:08:15 AM PST
by SoConPubbie
(Mitt and Obama: They're the same poison, just a different potency.)

Because there are two approaches to the of fiasco we just inflicted upon ourselves. One reaction is to conclude that the Rinos have done it to us again. Another reaction, like an Army that has just been beaten in the field, is to re-examine every belief, doctrine, assumption, polling data, and "common sense" opinions to determine empirically what actually happened. High on the list to reassess would be the obviously erroneous intelligence assumptions about ourselves as well as the enemy.

I urge you to read the article by Newt Gingrich which appears at the top of the link I sent to you. It is without question the most thoughtful analysis of what has happened to us published since the election. It raises many questions and has very few answers. Gingrich joins many of us who have been calling since the night of the election for a searching analysis based on real data, untainted by supposition, wishful thinking, doctrine, or resentments against Rinos, to figure out what is broke so we can get it fixed.

I would also urge you to take a look at Gingrich's speech at the Ronald Reagan Library which is now available on C-SPAN in which he alludes to the study to be undertaken. He articulates much of what we already know to the effect that demographics will kill us if we do not ground our party in reality and eschew myth, even conservative shibboleths, which we cannot empirically prove with hard data. The demographics are swamping us. We have got to get this right.

My questions were not meant to be personally contentious to you whose posts I have always respected but to be challenging. I believe we conservatives have to challenge every one of our assumptions or face extinction as an effective movement.

Boehner ought to consider the negotiating position that Obama may want to avoid the draconian defense cuts that are part of the off-the -cliff package. After all, a ballistic missile-equipped North Korea may not serve the caliphate’s strategic position either.

I agree. Deals were struck. McClain and Romney were put there so Obama would seem like he won. Same MO both times. Palin and Ryan put out there to sucker us. Get us all excited then let us lose. Both had to pretend to have some kind of election especially since they were both on the bottom of the list if at all where voters were concerned.

This is the way the Communists work or whatever you believe is responsible. Slow; but steady. Cheating, lying fraud anything that is destructive. While we are sitting here reading every blog whining, yapping about the problem that never seems to be solved; they continue.

“I quit caring about Americans with that election. They can fend for themselves. We were great charity givers,...no more. Not one red cent.”

I have the same reaction. For years I’d been to lazy to set up online bill payments; since the election they’ve all been paid online (with the exception of one local bill) - I’m doing my part to drive the government workforce into the dust. I don’t give to my parish anymore because the Church refused to treat Obama and the Dems as the enemy of the Church that they are; here in NJ they are successfully shutting down Catholic schools & hospitals, and we’re even closing parishes at this point (yet somehow “social justice”, along with the assumption that Dems are more socially just, found its way into campaign rhetoric).

Finally, as much in my own self-interests for lowering debt as to make any statement, I’ve become the stingiest consumer in the world. Still making money, but very little of it trickling down to Obama voters...

It is called incrementalism. The Dems have it mastered. For our ‘free’ health care, decades ago Leftist lawyers ramped up the lawsuits for malpractice. When a doctor has to pay in the six figures for malpractice insurance, he has to make enough money to pay that and his office rental, his receptionist and his nurse, etc. Then he needs some money to pay off his six figure student loans and his mortgage, etc. Leftists have been working decades to make health care costs exorbitant. Now they have taken over the industry and we will all be the worse for it.

I quit caring about Americans with that election. They can fend for themselves.

"For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: "If a man will not work, he shall not eat."

2 Thessalonians 3:10

I must admit that I have become very estranged from my "fellow Americans" as well. Without going into detail, I still perform charity work for the very poor and for the addicted. I do this because Christ commanded.

But I have long since given up on the hope that millions of "my fellow Americans" would turn a corner and become moral, productive citizens once again.

Exactly right. Obama simply would have never been able to win reelection without the enormous effort of the corrupt MSM. And despite all the misery surrounding them the American people believed the MSM and Obama and voted for him.

The corrupt MSM continues to tell us that things are really pretty good, compared to the Holocust, just as you suggest.

“Any real Republican, who was even moderately conservative and willing to hold Obama responsible for all of his bad decisions would have wiped the floor with Obama and walked away with a win.”

i know you love to blame Romney, but i think my favourite candidate: Newt Gingrich, who would have eviscerated Obama and his moderators in the debates, would have still lost, because of the MSM’s spin on Newt’s weaknesses and the rampant voter fraud that the Dem’s use going unchallenged by the GOP.

i think Romney was correct that all the freebies that Obama was offering the “takers” was too tempting for his minions not to go to the polls in hordes to ensure their continued supply of the “makers” goods.

Also, there were many like you, self-declared Christians, who could not stomach the thought of a mormon becoming president. so now we must live and suffer as a nation under the dominion of one we know who celebrates Ramadan’s end in the White House, and the fundamentalist islaminization of the Middle East under the guise of the so called, “Arab spring.”

i guess for you and all the others, better the devil we know, than the one we think we know.

I agree with you and Newt about the need to re-examine every assumption, belief, tactic, and strategy.

Ultimately politics is very much like business. A political party has a product to sell. To be successful a business must attract enough customers to generate sufficient sales to be economically viable. Likewise, a political party must attract enough votes to elect a majority in governing bodies to achieve political power.

Winning in both instances involves choice. The companies/parties, choose which customers/voters they wish to go after. The customers/voters assess the choices presented to them and either select one or choose not to buy if the choices aren’t perceived as either relevant or being a good value. In the 2012 election, 43% of the voters chose not to “buy”. The non buyers represent a untapped opportunity for both political parties, just as non buyers represent an opportunity for sellers in the business world.

Earning sales or votes ultimately comes down to the quality of the product and how it is marketed. A key fact — the company or the political party defines its product, not the buyer or voter. If the product is not purchased it is the seller’s fault for failing to understand the needs of its potential customers or properly communicating product benefits, it is not the fault of the customer when the customer chooses not to buy. Freedom of choice is inherent in the buying decision.

Having a superior product and marketing it effectively is key to success in business or politics. The more complex the product (i.e. automobiles, computers, political candidate) the more features/attributes/dimensions the product possesses. Specific features/attributes/dimensions are more or less relevant to individual consumers/voters. To one consumer the styling of an automobile may be more important than the quality of the sound system while the opposite may be the most important feature for another potential customer. Likewise, for the voter the race or ethnicity of the candidate may be the most important attribute while for another it may be the candidate’s position on one single narrowly defined issue. In the business world, superior products can fail because they “miss” on one single dimension the seller overlooks. An example is video tape technology. Betamax with its superior recording quality lost to VHS with its longer recording time. As it turned out the customer was willing to sacrifice quality to put more hours of programming on a single tape.

For complex products with many attributes, the seller must choose which features to highlight in its communication message to customers. A focus on less meaningful features will result in a less powerful and compelling selling message. Likewise an attempt to describe and explain many features is doomed to failure as the most important features to the potential buyer get diluted. When everything is important, nothing is important.

When trying to persuade buyers/voter, in addition to the content of the message, advertisers must consider reach and frequency when deploying the message. Reach refers to the number of potential customers the message will be heard by. Frequency is the number of times an individual potential customer will hear the message. For a fixed advertising budget, the more potential customers a seller tries to hit (reach) the fewer times the advertiser will be able to convey the message to an individual potential customer (frequency). For this reason, businesses and politicians attempt to target customers/voters most susceptible to responding to the message with a purchase/vote. Advertisers who optimize the tradeoff between reach and frequency will usually realize the highest sales (or votes) assuming the product is compelling and the content of the message is meaningful to the target customers.

In assessing the results of the election conservatives need to stop blaming the voters (i.e. the customers). As the sellers of the concept of individual liberty, it is our job to provide an attractive product (candidate) and to communicate the message in a manner that is relevant to enough potential voters to realize a majority. Potential voters are under no obligation to buy what we are selling. If voters were mislead by the message of our opponents or decided to vote based on flaw in our product (whether or not we perceived them as flaws), so be it. In the end the buyer, i.e. the voter, is right.

In the business world managers are selling everyday whether or not she/he visit customers. To move up the corporate pyramid you have to create and sell concepts internally. There are always disagreements over tactics and strategies and executive are always evaluating often conflicting points of view when making decisions. Successful business people and businesses always analyze objectively “losses” in order to determine how to improve strategy and execution. Almost always this post analysis allows the business to develop a better product and communication strategy for the next selling opportunity.

As you point out demographics are a given. Singles now outnumber families in the voting age population. Singles have different needs and concerns than traditional middle class nuclear families. Likewise the priorities of a poor recent immigrant or fourth generation undereducated and unemployed welfare youth on the street in a northeastern urban area are very different from the concerns of a white middle class college educated suburban dweller working in a management job at a corporation in Texas. The truths that are self evident to one are not to the other. As society becomes less homogenous, political parties must put together coalitions of disparate groups to win elections. The Democrats understand how to build coalitions of groups having different goals. Republicans seem to have difficulty analyzing groups and tailoring the message.

Ultimately it boils down to the product and the message. Is our product (our philosophy) relevant to 51% of the people who turn out to vote? If not, our product will “lose” when it is tested in the marketplace. Occasionally we may win when the competition does a particularly poor communication job or its candidate makes a major mistake (the packaging is flawed). However, over time people will consistently buy the most compelling and relevant product to their individual situations. Purveyors of products declining in relevance lose market share until they exit the scene.

Is our problem the product, the message, or both? Likely both. With respect to the product, the major issue seems to be the attractiveness of the packaging (i.e. the candidate), not the content (the concept of individual liberty). Certainly with the message itself we have major issues with content, reach, and frequency. Our problems with both packaging and message relate almost entirely to the internal processes of the Republican Party. The party is not united and when an organization lacks unity it often compromises the quality of its leadership and sends out confusing messages. Look at the US automobile companies in the 1970’s for example — poor leadership, poor products, and confusing messages to the consumer.

If the Republican Party defines its target voter as white, suburban, middle-class, churchgoing and belonging to a traditional nuclear family it will be swamped by the current demographic and cultural trends. What encourages me is the 43% of Americans who choose not to vote. They have rejected the message of both parties yet they are members of the society. They represent an untapped pool of potential voters for a party willing to take the time to understand their aspirations and communicate to them how they can achieve their dreams though individual liberty and self reliance.

Conservatives need to stop blaming Romney and wake up to the harsh reality that half of the American population believes they’re entitled to the other half of the American population money. They don’t care if it cost them their freedom.

You are right, this is a vast pool of potential customers for our product. I agree with you, our product is individual liberty but I do not believe it was among the choices which the customers consciously considered in the last election. In my view Obama succeeded in shaping the issues, as Newt pointed out in his speech, the issue became Sandra Fluke and more recently became Grover Norquist. It is clear that it no time in this campaign did we drive the debate. My instinct is (only instinct, not knowledge) that in politics if you are on defense you are losing.

That suggests (but only suggests) that there is an entire breakdown in message identification as well as message delivery. It seems to me that there should be a handbook on the timing, nature, target, and expected effectiveness of, for example, radio advertising to Hispanic groups. I would expect, (but only expect, not presume) that we will find that there is a interesting curve of effectiveness which tells us that early messages are more dollar productive than later messages. I suspect we will find that the dollar cost per vote is on a similar curve.

But all this presumes that there is a dedication to fact-finding in which all methods of message selection, delivery and persuasion is tested against other methods and we have some hard data upon which to proceed. In other words when is it effective to spend money on radio advertising, television advertising, cyber war, boots on the ground get out the vote? The subset of questions which popped to mind merely considering such a list is long and and only leads to more questions.

But I do not understand how we can conclude that we have bad messenger or a bad message until we know where we screwed up. Until we know that it was our ground game, or that it was our belated response to the negative ads characterizing Romney, or was the failure to pursue Benghazi, or was the failure to articulate the coming financial disaster, or that it was the muzzling of Paul Ryan, that caused the apparent problem, i.e., the inability to get white Republicans to the polls. How can we conclude that it was Romney's Mormonism, as one poster on this thread has asserted? How can we say that it was conservatives staying home because of Romney's history in Massachusetts if we do not know what the electorate knew? We can pontificate all day long and feel self-righteous about our conservative bona fides that it "t'was Rinos that killed the beast" or we can actually find out what happened.

One of the most dangerous courses in war, business, or politics is to engage in assumptions. What appears to be "common sense" to me as a well-educated, white, suburbanite, upper-middle-class, professional is not necessarily obvious to single women who have felt betrayed by one man after another. They do not think the way I do. We have very very little in common. All I have to do to prove this to myself is to take a look at the magazines directed to women in a doctor's waiting room. We laughed at Sandra fluke, we thought her demands were ludicrous and would backfire on Democrats. Who had the last laugh?

What we do not know is killing us. What we think we know is killing us faster.

If we continue self righteous but ignorant, we will never crest the demographic tsunami which is breaking upon us.

That suggests (but only suggests) that there is an entire breakdown in message identification as well as message delivery.

Oddly enough this all has me thinking of the French Revolution days. Think of it, the King is hanging by a thread and then the crops fail leaving the King and the faithful citizens to be victims of war, beheadings, and ultimately dictatorship.

That crop failure, our guys putting their feet in their mouths, it sure feels like another incident of losing, for lack of a better term, the "mandate of Heaven"

Not sure what you do but sit around and wait for the other guy to lose his.

Please consider giving to Conservative Red States like Oklahoma or Mississippi in the event of tornadoes wiping them out or some other disaster. While it’s true half the Country is loaded with blue state @ssholes, there are red states out there that will most likely be in a state of disaster or emergency next year. Don’t withhold your charity if they are suffering, because I know I won’t. Blue staters can rot in hell for all I care.

41
posted on 12/27/2012 10:31:07 AM PST
by Prole
(Please pray for the families of Chris and Channon. May God always watch over them)

Conservatives need to stop blaming Romney and wake up to the harsh reality that half of the American population believes theyre entitled to the other half of the American population money. They dont care if it cost them their freedom.

Conservatives need to wake up to the reality that unless their side COMMUNICATES conservatism in all of it's totality to include Fiscal, Social and Military/Defense, they don't have a chance in Hell of winning the argument, much less, winning elections.

Mitt Romney was the poster boy of the GOP elite and their message of pragmatism, moderation, and go-along to get along.

He didn't communicate any sense of Fiscal conservatism, his stated policies would do little to nothing in reigning in and DECREASING the size of government and he went absolutely AWOL on social conservatism to the point that he was just a little to the right of the Democrat positions on both Abortion and the Gay Agenda.

If conservatives, such as yourself, refuse to put the blame squarely where it belongs, on the shoulders of both Romney and the GOP-E with their attempt to move the party to the left, then conservatives will hasten the day that the GOP goes the way of the WHIGS.

You will either be honest with yourselves about what went wrong or you will be doomed to repeat the failures of 2008 and 2012.

We, as a party, will either return to the message of Ronald Reagan or we will die.

43
posted on 12/27/2012 11:30:18 AM PST
by SoConPubbie
(Mitt and Obama: They're the same poison, just a different potency.)

Ah c'mon. This was all brought out by fellow Republicans in the primaries.

Instead, Obamas campaign systematically reduced his rival, Wall Street financier Mitt Romney, to a conniving, felonious financial pirate who did dastardly things, from letting the uninsured die to putting his pet dog Seamus in a cage on top of the family car."

Obama won because voters lacked confidence that the GOP would make things better. Is is too much to ask the GOP [and conservatives] to lay out specifics on how they will improve the lives of the family working middle class? Hint: step one bring back their exported jobs.

Sorry my FRiend, but we really have to STOP thinking and strategizing like we are a Constitutional Republic and RECOGNIZE what we once knew and understood is OVER. We MUST start thinking and strategizing as a resistance movement under enemy occupation.

We are under enemy occupation - MarxoFascists staged a velvet coup right under our noses - with help from a complicit Ruling Class that uses elections to create an illusion we have any say or choice in who rules us. The dependent Class they made their slaves have changed the demographics and there is no way in hell a Conservative ideology wins against a welfare state. That’s plain acknowledgement of human nature.

We need to start thinking outside the damn box and the paradigm illusion created to keep us docile whilst the enemy enslaves us right in our face.

That means we no longer strategize about “winning elections”. Conservatives will NEVER, EVER win another “Election” ever again. Not in a MarxoFascist state. 100% of the vote to Obama in some places and still we are reading about strategizing to win elections in 2014?? We’re not paying attention to what time it really is.

I sadly fear that by the time this remnant of Americans wake up and recognize our own supposed government is at war with us, and is engaged in a process of subjugation and eradication - it is going to be too late for any effective resistance.

Prediction-—Obama will not see the end of his term. I don’t know how but I feel he will be forced out even if its a Coup from the Army. He will be forced to resign. Just a gut feeling. I believe the election was fixed. Mitt wasn’t to win. It was as rigged as any WWF match up. Hulk Hogan always took the belt. There is only so much snake oil the people will drink-—even when sold by Masterful Obama and his Media whores. In the end—reality always wins. Look at the Soviet Union.

Hell, Conservatives will never even win another PRIMARY after the Supreme Court declared money is speech. Conservatives can't raise enough free $peech to compete against big money controlling interests. Romney and Obama won because they had the most money, not the best ideas. Owing your arse to those who provide big money is no way for conservative ideas to triumph. Money gives the candidate more speech. The one with the most $peech wins.

Letting Congress restrict who can domestically finance a campaign and limiting support automatically created a worse form of cronyism we suffer.

It takes money to advertise and get a message out. In that regard money spent on political campaigns IS the ultimate form of free speech as intended by the Founders.

But since we now have a media that act as King-makers in favor of the MarxoFascists, money no longer matters in deciding who will rule us. The media in league with the Ruling Class decides who will rule and what the narrative for any national issue will be for us.

The commies control both parties and the media. Do the math. It’s not hard.

Conservatives have ‘won’ their last honest national election back in 2008. 2010 was an anomaly that will never be allowed to happen again.

I’ll give you a run for your money; there is nothing that I can’t crazy-glue or “shoe-goo” back together to get another year out of. I’ve gone to corporate meetings in an adult-sized pair of Boy Scout slacks because I’m too cheap to buy another pair of Dockers...

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